Summary of contents
Today we tell you about our success story with Cartagena City Council ✅. Do you want to know how we helped them optimize their resources to achieve success? 🏆. Read on!
Cartagena City Council automates its telephone appointment service and manages to offer a 7×24 service thanks to GESDITEL’s virtual telephone assistants.
The agreement reached between the Cartagena City Council and the telecommunications operator specialized in companies and public administrations GESDITEL has allowed this City Council to improve its Citizen Service, extend its opening hours and dedicate the human resources that until now were responsible for performing repetitive tasks, such as the telephone service for appointment allocation, to functions that require a higher level of specialization and that provide added value to citizens.
GESDITEL’s virtual assistants are able to verify the user’s identity, checking the veracity of their identity document (DNI, CIF or NIE) and offer and book appointments for each of the City Council’s agendas.
Nearly a quarter of a million citizens benefit from this innovative service that allows you to book appointments at any time from Monday to Sunday and in turn, avoid human contact during this process.
Why do you contact GESDITEL?
We have all been taken by surprise by the COVID-19 issue. All companies and administrations have had to look for solutions that allow them to continue offering their services to customers and citizens and that, at the same time, allow teleworking and are in accordance with the new rules of social distancing.
Thus, the use of virtual assistants that help to organize previous appointments, avoid crowds of people and offer 7×24 uninterrupted telephone attention are a great option for all those companies that strive to offer the best version of themselves in the face of this difficult situation.
Cartagena City Council heard about virtual assistants and decided to contact several companies to evaluate the option of automating their appointment scheduling services, and GESDITEL was the best option.
How did your Citizen Service and City Councils work in Cartagena City Council?
Until GESDITEL’s virtual assistants appeared, the Cartagena City Council used part of its human resources to receive phone calls, verify the identity of the users of the appointment service, take their data and assign the appointment on the City Council’s online platform. The system limited the number of appointments that could be made in the City Council’s online platform.
This system limited the telephone attention times to office hours, and caused these public servants to be glued to the telephone performing repetitive and unproductive tasks.
What needs did we detect?
- Need to automate the telephone appointment service.
- Manage appointments reliably and without human contact.
- Expanding telephone service hours.
- Improve wait times for appointment booking.
- Avoid human contact and crowds.
- To have full control over the system.
What solutions do we implement?
After analyzing the volume of calls received, and calculating the time required for a virtual assistant to book an appointment (in this case, the average is 1.3 minutes), we opted for the following solution at the Cartagena City Council:
- Call Queue Management Software:
As soon as the phone call enters the system we run it through our call queue management software. This software takes care of minimizing the response times of the 8 virtual assistants and keeping the users on hold when more than 8 calls concur.
- 8 virtual assistants for telephone appointment management.
Each attendant is capable of handling a simultaneous call and ending the call with a booked appointment. As soon as the call is answered the attendant is free to attend the next call in less than a second.
- Integration with 4 different agendas.
We integrate our wizards with 4 different agendas. To maximize the profitability of the assistants, all of them are able to manage appointments in 4 different agendas.
- Text to Speech function
Thanks to this function we can translate to speech the text that the Town Hall appointment booking system presents on screen. It is quite useful to avoid having to modify the assistants when changing data of some of the agendas (address, name, etc.). The virtual assistant will read that is written on the agenda and no modification will be required.
- Tone detection function by DTMF (dialing numbers on the telephone keypad).
To facilitate the user experience in this system, DTMF tone detection is agreed upon. That is, the user will give commands with the keypad of his phone instead of by voice. This system is programmed in this way because of the difficulty in transcribing people’s surnames. The wizard offers options and the user decides with their keypad.
- Verification of different types of identity documents: DNI, CIF, NIF.
Wizards offer several options for identification: DNI, CIF or NIF. Once the identity document is entered, without handwriting, the assistant verifies the veracity of the same and passes the next phase for the appointment reservation.
- Integration with the Appointment system used by the City Council (company “Encólate”).
GESDITEL assistants consult the previous appointments available in the software that the City Council normally uses. It consults the available appointments and offers several options to the user. Our assistant adapts to the needs of the City Council, not the other way around. There is no need to change software.
- Closing of appointments and communication to the user of place, date and time.
Once the appointment has been made, our assistants ask the user for a contact telephone number. At this point we have the option to send an SMS to the user with the details of the appointment.
- Statistical information on the performance of the virtual assistants and call concurrence.
To guarantee at all times the correct functioning of the system, we provide Cartagena City Council with an online platform where they can consult in real time the performance statistics of the virtual assistants and the call occupancy of their departments, providing detailed information on total volume of calls received, calls per hour, calls per day of the week, calls handled by each of the assistants, etc.
What’s the result?
BEFORE
- Phone numbers manned by people.
- High staffing costs.
- High waiting times.
- Appointment booking schedule reduced to office hours.
- Lack of statistical control of the process.
NOW
. 
- Automated pre-appointments
- Structural cost savings.
- Expansion of hours to 7×24.
- Nearly zero waiting times.
- Real-time statistical information.